She was a lover of art, and a woman who made it her mission to help residents of what was once known as the Orillia Asylum for Idiots express themselves through it.

But little else is known about Judy Richardson, a former occupational therapist at Ontario’s oldest institution for the developmentally disabled, who in 1989 started an art class for those who badly needed a creative outlet.

When Richardson died more than a decade ago, she left behind a 200-piece collection of paintings and drawings produced by her students at the Huronia Regional Centre, as the institution was later renamed. The cache was donated to Toronto’s Creative Spirit Art Centre and is now on display, in its entirety, for the first time.

Attempts by exhibit organizers and those with an interest in the institution’s history to learn more about the woman behind the Huronia art project have been, for the most part, fruitless.

“She’s a mystery woman. Judy Richardson is a mystery woman,” says Thelma Wheatley, an author whose book about Huronia,
And Neither Have I Wings to Fly
, was released earlier this year. “We know little about her, other than she provided all this amazing artwork.”

It’s a bright story to come out of an institution with an otherwise dark history that is about to become the focus of a $1-billion class-action lawsuit. The province of Ontario is the target of the legal action taken on behalf of thousands of former residents of Huronia and two other institutions, alleging decades of abuse and systematic mistreatment.

Run by the provincial government from 1876 until 2009, Huronia, at its peak, was home to 2,600 children and adults with disabilities.

Despite an inquest, a scathing government-commissioned report and numerous newspaper investigations over the years that highlighted the institution’s many inadequacies — including one report by Toronto Star columnist Pierre Berton in 1960 — Huronia remained open for decades.

Richardson’s collection, produced by institutionalized Huronia residents, was donated to the
Creative Spirit Art Centre
by her husband, who passed them on to Ellen Anderson, the centre’s founder, on condition they never be sold.

“It’s just amazing that they did this in spite of where they were,” Anderson says of the art as she sorts through the book of paintings in her bright, west-end studio. Creative Spirit, located in a small brick building in Dovercourt Village, provides art education and studio space for people with disabilities.

Anderson met Richardson several years before she died, at an art and disability conference in Toronto. When Anderson flipped through Richardson’s Huronia collection, she was stunned by how vibrant and evocative it was. At the time, she says, she had “no idea of the context and the environment the art was created in.”

She now thinks of Richardson as “an incredible hero.”

With few resources at her disposal, Richardson often purchased art supplies with her own money during the years she spent at Huronia, according to Anderson.

The paintings have been tucked away in a basement storage cupboard at Creative Spirit for years — the art centre is small and can only accommodate one exhibit at a time — but as stories of alleged abuse and neglect connected to the upcoming lawsuit began to surface, Anderson was inspired to bring them out.

The pieces vary in skill level and subject. Some are painted, others drawn with marker or pencil, a few sketched on the backs of envelopes. There are cats and roosters, dinosaurs and Christmas trees, women with blond hair and rouged lips. Pencilled in on the back of each painting is a comment from Richardson on the artist who produced the work.

“L. is a senior gentleman who loves to draw memories of long ago,” she wrote. “Model ‘T’ cars, apples trees and birds and people.”

“K. is almost non-verbal. She will only draw sometimes. Near Xmas, she will draw Dad’s houses(s), tree sister, family events.”

“H. is in his 30s and is legally blind. He likes to draw and paint, feeling the most confident with large markers (eye sight). Favourite subjects are dinosaurs and monsters.”

The bulk of the art was produced by Paul Sadgrove, a Huronia resident born with autism and a natural artistic talent. Sadgrove, now 57, is deaf and mute. He was a resident at the institution from 1962, when he was 7 years old, until 1998.

“He was fortunate to have Judy as a teacher,” says his mother, June Sadgrove. “She looked on him as a fellow artist. She saw the talent that he had.”

In the mid-1990s, when Sadgrove was 40, Richardson entered several of his paintings in a prestigious art show at a local gallery in Orillia. Not wanting to attract special attention, she did so without providing any details about the artist or his disability. Two of the pieces were selected from hundreds to be part of a local art show.

Though Sadgrove is a member of the class-action, his family does not know for certain whether he was abused or mistreated at Huronia because he is not able communicate.

Sadgrove, who now lives in Newmarket with his sister, continues to take classes and produce art, which has been displayed in many local galleries. His mother credits Richardson with cultivating her son’s talent.

Anderson remembers being struck, that one time she met Richardson, with how proud she was of the work her students produced.

“I think Judy had foresight,” Anderson says. “I think Judy understood that it was important for these images to be shown to the rest of the world.”

The Creative Spirit Art Centre, at 999 Dovercourt Rd., is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday by appointment. The exhibit “Breaking out of Huronia” runs until July 26.

Correction - June 6, 2013:
This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the gallery's hours of operation.

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